Despite impressive progress in common carp farming during the last years, the impact of fish diseases is still an important problem in aquaculture. Current methods to control diseases consist, among others, of cultural environment control, medication or vaccination. Another alternative approach is to prevent diseases by improving the immune capacity of fish by or genetic selection. Selection breeding has made a great progress for common carp, but only limited to the growth characteristics, and resistance breeding research was only in the initial stage. In the future, common carp industry should focus on using of genetic variation, choosing suitable breeding methods, developing diseases resistance breeding program actively. In this review, stress effects on diseases resistance, genetic basis of diseases resistance, relationship between diseases resistance and other traits, evaluation and and related methods of breeding for the genetic improvement of disease resistance in common carp were given, at last, the paper give some information on the domestic latest progress in related fields.